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Like the old saying goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words." In project management, this concept can be extended to "A one page schedule is worth a thousand words." Extend this concept a little and a good project schedule can be worth tens of thousands of words. Using familiar symbols and colors it's possible to show your audience at-a-glance how a project is doing.

In the Dashboard Chart, below, a red stoplight is used to indicate that a project requires management intervention due to the project being behind schedule and/or over budget. Green indicates the project is within budget and on schedule.

KIDASA Software's Stoplights and Indicators e-book includes additional information on this topic and can be found here

Tips and Tricks

Answers

Tip of the month: Create a Mini Schedule

Add a column with percent complete symbols

Question: How do I add a percent complete symbol to a column?

View Schedule (PDF)

Easily add Columns with Stoplight Status Indicators

Question: I want to add stoplights and other indicators to my schedules. I really don't want to read the manual. Is this possible?

View Schedule (PDF)

Import several dates for a single row on a schedule

Question: I'd like to be able to import several dates from Excel for a single row on my schedule...it's how management likes to see serial events for a single line-item... they call the result Birds on-a-wire.

Work with Microsoft Project Custom Templates

Question: I want to create a report from Microsoft Project and apply a standard template to it. What are the steps necessary to accomplish this?

Customize Summary Bars

Question: I would like to customize the shading and text for the summary bars and the lower level outline bars. How do I do this?

More questions covered this month:

How many vertical links to/from a single symbol?
I have purchased Milestones Professional 2008. Do I also need to purchase Companion
and Simplicity separately or are they included in Professional?
I see that it's possible to use numbers instead of dates for the time scale. This
is great for contract proposals. When I finally have a starting date for my contract
how to I get my date headings to adjust to the correct dates with the schedule I
set up for the proposal?

August 2009 Q&A Want More? Visit the KIDASA Software Knowledgebase.

Did you miss the last newsletter? Here's what was included:

Refresh from Microsoft Office Project Server
Tip of the month: I have a schedule with 3 columns. I want the End Dates column on the right side of my schedule. How can I do this?
Is there any way that the schedule can just scroll into the next (or previous) week, month, quarter, year?
If the Microsoft Project file has two tasks with the same text "ID" then which task will the Milestones refresh program use to update the Milestones presentation schedule?
Can a time scale show numbers instead of dates? For example, can I show 1, 2, ... instead of January, February, ...
Can I show the duration of a horizontal task bar as the text for that bar? Can I add text to it? For Example [duration] working days.
I would like to add vertical milestone lines across all tasks.
Where do I find a programmer's reference for Milestones Professional's automation interface?

“What Milestones Can Do For You!”

Unleash the full power of Milestones! Sign up for a FREE half-hour online session: “What Milestones Can Do For You!” This session will:

•	Demonstrate the possibilities through a variety of examples.
•	Show you how to format small or large projects. Milestones can do them all - so can you!
•	Get you up and running smoothly.
•	Wow you with Milestones features - both basic and advanced - so that you can take advantage of them all.

Sessions are scheduled the last Wednesday of EVERY month! For a list of available times and dates, e-mail: milestones@kidasa.com.

	Order a training session today. Learn more.
"Thank you so very much for a clear, concise, and comprehensive training session on Milestones Professional 2008. I have used the program infrequently over the past 5-6 years, but now that I understand the full capability of the program, I fully intend to use Milestones as my primary project management tool." - Satisfied Customer